Call for Participation: Online Paper Development Workshop on Digital Sovereignty

We are delighted to announce that we are arranging an online Paper Development Workshop (PDW) for our Information Systems Journal Special Issue on Digital Sovereignty. The aim of the PDW is to give prospective authors for the special issue the opportunity to meet the editors and present and discuss their preliminary work on the topic. To allow authors from different geographic regions of AIS to participate, the workshop will have three different sessions

Digital technologies, digital infrastructures, and platform ecosystems have become critical resources for nations, organisations, communities, and individuals. As a result, questions of who controls digital infrastructures, who governs data, and who sets the rules for digital innovation have become concerns for public administration, economic strategy, and everyday life. Artificial intelligence (AI) is perhaps the domain where the question of digital sovereignty is currently most acute — raising issues of dependence, available alternatives, and open-source solutions.

Yet information systems research should have much to contribute, given its socio-technical approach to the study of digital technologies in context. There is a substantial body of information systems research relevant to the digital sovereignty discourse by addressing questions including how states and organisations can navigate global digital ecosystems, how digital architectures and governance standards can be designed to support digital sovereignty, how digital sovereignty influences digital innovation and the short- and long-term implications for individuals' and communities’ autonomy, rights, resilience and risks.

In this special issue, we invite empirically grounded and theoretically ambitious research that explains digital sovereignty as a socio-technical accomplishment, including its tensions, trade-offs, and unintended consequences. We also welcome conceptual or review papers on the topic. We expect studies based on qualitative research, but we also welcome ideas for quantitative contributions, provided they emphasise the research context and the theoretical and practical implications of their findings.

Online Workshop Format

The online workshop will consist of presentations and interactions with special issue editors.

Participation is based on an accepted extended abstract of up to 3 pages. The abstract must indicate a plan for a substantial information systems contribution foregrounding digital technologies in context, emphasising the specific nature of digital technologies, infrastructures, and platforms and their social implications.

To allow participation from the different AIS regions, there will be three parallel online sessions:

Asia-Pacific: September 24th 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM SGT

Africa/Europe: September 24th 4 PM to 8 PM UTC

Americas: September 30th 11:00 AM to 3 PM EDT